The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand.
After completing the specialization, you will be able to:
* Discuss the threats and opportunities that major global trends such as climate change present to businesses;
* Identify ways a company can improve its environmental and social performance;
* Evaluate and compare companies’ sustainability activities and products;
* Develop a business case for implementing sustainability investments;
* Identify key criteria of green businesses and product design;
* Be a change agent in your organization;
* Understand emerging topics in sustainable business, including those in the public policy space.
We're very excited about offering this MOOC specialization and hope it gives you the first step toward learning about and taking action to make the places you work and the products you buy more sustainable.
Sustainable business changes daily with new products, innovations and ideas, so you will be important in keeping the class current. We look forward to learning from you as you take this green journey!
______

From the lesson

Sustainable Thinking

The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver wants to help you become a change agent for sustainable business. We hope that with the skills and concepts you gain from this specialization that you will help your business reduce its social and environmental impact. Being a change agent is hard. It takes courage and passion and knowledge. To implement change also requires being able to make the case for that change in terms that people in your company or organization respond to and understand.
We begin our journey to being a change agent by introducing sustainability thinking. Sustainable business requires a new way of seeing and thinking about how business operates. By beginning to think sustainably you will be better able to identify ways that your company can improve and explain those changes to decision makers.
We will look at 6 ways of thinking related to sustainability:
• Life-Cycle Thinking
• Long-Term Thinking
• Circular Thinking
• Resilience Thinking
• Systems Thinking
• Context Thinking